lockOn 2 - a Solstice present for y'all!

[jph_wacheski]

ok, I was going to wait till this was good and "done" befor posting a bunch of inprogress versions,. but tis' the season,. so heres ya' go!

lockOn was the first game I ever released on the net,. way back in 2003,. It was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, from my site alone,. as well it has been featured on many PC and game mag. cover disks around the world,. .

What you have here as an effort to remake that game, now powered with ZGE! It is close to haveing all the features of the original now, and I think it is fun, and looks and sounds quite good,. although I am sure I will tweek and add to it,. needs a big graphic effect for the player death,. and the last badguy the one that steals the bonus pods. In keeping with the original it is compleatly 2d every pixel is on zero Z,. the camera doesn't even move,. some features of note;

- the fluid dynamics of the background particles,. they show the wind direction,. that pushes the pods you need to collect around the space,. (may effect more stuff in future ver.)
- the voice samples,. yup thats me I thought adding them would bloat the file,. however if I tryed I could probably get it back down to 64k but i see no reason,. i.e. no one paying me to. 69k aint bad anyhow,. my goal is to keep it under 128k just soes I has a limit!
- the sprites are mostly superformulas thanks to kattle87,. and also big shouts to kjell for helping get the find nearest array setup working! and of course ville you know I lov ya,. ZGE is the best game making sytem availible to human people!

[Kjell]

Hey jph,

Your best ZGE release so far ( in my book )! I really like the scale of the bullets and pick-ups, nice & small ( reminds me of Bangai-O somehow ). And the voice overs add allot to the overall experience, don't cut them because of a couple of kilobytes Personally I would use a little more spacing for the GUI elements from the sides of the screen, and perhaps something to make it a little more then just text .. but these kind of things are very personal. It does have that very retro arcade feel now, with the pixel fonts and the title screen / menu combo and all. Anyway, looking forward to the next iteration ~

K

[VilleK]

Yeah, I like this too! The voice samples add lots of atmosphere, and the general mix of sounds is also very well done. You have a very dark voice jph

I agree with Kjell that the small sprites and homing missiles makes you think of Bangai-O, and that is a compliment.

I think I probably did not grasp the gameplay mechanics fully but I'm sure it will come to me when I try it some more. If I'm to suggest any improvement it would be to add some character to the player ship, like that eye in Filaments for example. I think it adds to the immersion of games if you get a feel for what kind of thing you are controlling instead of just a abstract shape.

This brightened up my saturday morning, keep up the good work jph!

[VilleK]

I scored around 46000 yesterday, that is a decent score I hope? Quite a nice feeling to play it in fullscreen with loud volume late at night.

For the final version you could consider saving the highest score in a "lockon_highscore"-file.

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

After playing some more, I found that picking up specific items can be a little difficult at times. Perhaps you could lower the control inertia slightly or increase pickup radius a little? Have a look at this video, you'll see ( 1:26 ) what ( 1:50 ) I mean ( 2:20 )

K

[jph_wacheski]

Ok, I think i have addressed all the great suggestions., Thanks guys great to get feedback I added flying number effects when you get points these are quite good for teaching you how to play the game,. as your Multiplier goes up you see the score values rise and the basic game mechanic is made more clear,.
The high-score is now saved,. so extract the .exe to your games folder befor playing,. if you want it to save the score for you,.
Did some work on the GUI,. moveing the stuff in from the edges,. and adding the old numeral font from the original game for the multiplier,. also to highten the focus on it as it has become the central element of the scoring system,. added a new text effect when the player is hit and the Multiplier is reset!
Not sure what to do about the speed vs ineria thing,. I tryed an experiment here,. the pods now attract to the player a bit when close,. Rachetn'Clank style,. as well i increased the friction a bit likely shaveing a smidge off the top speed,. not sure this is enouph. However, the speed of the player is crucial to servival,. . IMHO it is ok to miss some pods as they last long enouph that you can swoop back and get them,. this is a balance issue,. perhaps I will add a menu to the title screen and let people tweek top-speed, acceleration and inertia a bit? I had planed to for a volume setting anyhow,. could do some unlockable 'ships' with various hard wired settings,. .

Ville, I did try adding to the player, however it is a fast moveing player and some what smallish,. most stuff I tried looked too busy,. the enimies have a bit of charecter so i think it is ok,.

Once again, I still have a few ideas for this, but it is quite a bit better already based on your suggestions,. thanks for the feedback.

[VilleK]

I like the improvements. You should wait a few more days so that you can make it a 2009 release

And maybe make a video like the one Kjell did. It would be interesting to see how you play it yourself to get large scores.

[jph_wacheski]

thanks Ville,. yup, I bet I will be relasing a new ver. in a new year,. 2009 danm we are gettin' old eh.

Kjell that is a great video how did you cap. it? I have tried fraps but it dont get the sounds so i been using my advanced 'camera video' cap. method,. . I do actually like the lo-fi results,. still would like to know what you used,. and that storage site looks very interesting too,. thanks for all your good info.s you have a great eye for finding interesting stuff. when we going to see a game demo from you? have you been releaseing games on the down-low or are you working on an epic? <curious>

I was playing Bangi-o DS last night,. and yeah this does have strong similarites,. the dreamcast game was deffiinitly an influance on the original lockOn,. and after finaly getting into the DS ver. (I had not 'got it' previously,. found it to puzzley and complex on first look) I can see even more influance comeing into my next game,. .

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

Drop.io is quite nice for video sharing as you can still download the original file, but it also generates a flash based version that you can stream as a preview. Downside is that there is a 100mb limit per free account ( although there is no limit on the amount of accounts you create ). For the capture I used SnagIt ( bit heavier then FRAPS ). And I haven't been releasing anything on the low no

K

[jph_wacheski]

Ok, here is my first RELEASE candidate,. give it a whirrl and report any issues,.

I will have to work out some way to control d/ls on my site still, (any ideas? using PmWiki??) however I am going to try selling this one,. $3.44 is quite cheap, and i am doing it mostly to get the system (e-pay and some form of controled d/l) set up for the coming larger games,. so here is my time limited DEMO ver. it runs for 333 seconds then stops playing. of course you can just re-run the demo,. however if anyone actually enjoys it they may want the FULL game. wut you guys think?

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

Bold initiative going commercial with ZGE To start off, all the best of luck ~ Now, I do think there are slightly different "rules" when you go commercial .. and it's all a matter of how much you're willing to bend.

- Consider a installer. It makes the process of setting up the game / shortcuts / uninstalling easier, plus you can add for example a URL shortcut in the Start Menu folder you're installing to.

- Drop the compression on the exe, it's nice for demo's and that certain "scene". But it results in slower startup time, plus the problem of warnings on various anti-virus products.

- Even though I know you're imitating the classic arcade style title screen containing copyright, control etc. It does make the "unregistered copy" message a bit invisible. You might want to use a separate screen before your title screen.

- This is a difficult one, since I know you mentioned you like dropping the player in a "experience", and discovering the mechanics would be part of that .. but a explanation of the game mechanics ( could also be arcade style ) might be desirable for a significant portion of players.

- Somehow I'd expect a option to return to the title screen from the pause menu.

- I personally don't like it when ESC exits a game ( but it's handy during development ).

- Finally, there are some features I expect of PC games missing. Minimize / full-screen buttons, keyboard / joystick ( i should really find some time for this ) setup .. and a online leader board would be neat too, but a local highscore list ( with 3 symbol initials? ) at the least.

And not sure what payment system is best these days, and which one gives the best value for money. I guess Paypal has good recognition ( not the best reputation though ).

*Concerning this version of LO2, really like the color effects you added when you enter a new wave or die

+The demo seems to crash on my machine after you die ( and probably just before it wants to return to the title screen ) .. I'll test on some more machines.

K

[VilleK]

I think Kjells advice are all sensible, and they are a good indication on what is still missing from ZGE for making commercial products. I do think and hope people are willing to forgive certain things considering the game is sold for a very cheap price though.

Some quick comments:

Installers: Some people wants installers, others don't. You might lose potential buyers either way. To fully guard against this offer two different downloads: a zipped exe-version, and a installer-version.

I also get that crash sometimes. Maybe it is related to saving highscores? Anything else happing in your code when the game ends, jph?

Some game instructions would be nice, but you could keep that online.

Most importantly: the game is great jph

[Kjell]

Hi guys,

You're right Ville, it's the file saving that is causing the problem. It seems to be related to the game running from either a path that contains spaces ( desktop for example .. C:\Documents and Setting\etc. ) or consists of too many characters.

And yea, I'm being a little harsh here .. especially the "indie crowd" won't mind allot of the points I mentioned.

K

[jph_wacheski]

Great suggestions guys! thanks a bunch. I am no fan of installers,. however I will do like Ville suggests and offer one for those that are,. it does as you point out Kjell provide the opportunity to add links on the start menu.., I was thinking to do the instructions on the web site and I could then just include that page in the install,. .

I had not even thought that I could NOT use the compresion,. (doh!) but that gets ride of the pause when running,. (for my photo game too!)

added the t for title on pause, and the text I forgot to add to tell how to un-pause,. thanks for reminding me of that! oh, you can press t at any time as well.

as for these "Minimize / full-screen buttons, keyboard / joystick setup .. and a online leader board"
I will have to leave this to you guys,. or others, who want to improve ZGE,. as I have already begun a couple new games and am too excited about them to start looking into the souce codes,. . this stuff is icing anyhow so if and when these become possible I will surely add them,. .

will look into this: " but a local highscore list ( with 3 symbol initials? ) at the least. "

so what to do about this file naming crash ??

[VilleK]

I suggest you play the game in the preview-mode a couple of times and study the log-window for warnings or errors that may cause crash when running as a exe-file.

And if you want to, you can also PM me your zgeproj-file so I can try to recreate the crash in the Delphi-debugger.